I was telling my friend Patti, the other day that sometimes I just need a bite of cake. One bite…like at ten o’clock at night when it’s quiet and the kids are asleep and I’m enjoying my down time. And not a whole piece of cake, just a bite.

I crushed an entire sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints into the cupcake crumbles.

Yum, right? Then I emptied a can of vanilla icing into the bowl. I really wanted to use cream cheese icing, but hubby is not big on cream cheese icing. I did not need to eat all of these cake balls myself, so I compromised. In this case, vanilla icing=fitting into my pants.

I mushed it all up and formed little balls. I had some little wooden spoon things…remember like those ones you used to get with the ice cream cups?…and stuck those in each ball. I stuck them in the freezer for a bit and then dipped them in light cocoa candy melts. I added a few sprinkles, because, well, sprinkles make everything taste better.

It started three years ago when we lived in New Jersey. My son was in Kindergarten. According to NJ school law at the time, you could not send anything to school (for birthdays, parties, etc) that was not ‘healthy.’ Now that doesn’t exactly make much room for special birthday cupcakes. So, after some thought, I came up with a plan. Cinnamon muffins (which vaguely LOOK like cupcakes) and pretzel candles. I did jazz up the pretzels a bit with candy coating and jimmies…but it’s still a pretzel and pretzels were on the acceptable list and technically it’s a pretzel. I was clinging to that. Turns out, the kids loved them and thus began our birthday cupcake tradition. Now that we live in Texas, cupcakes are still acceptable special birthday treat. At the request of the birthday boy, this year was devil’s food with chocolate icing. Yummy choice.

To make the pretzels, I just dipped pretzels sticks into white candy melts, twirled the stick to get rid of the excess coating, and rolled them in jimmies. Once I get them pushed into the cupcake, I give them a little flame with yellow icing. This year, one of the third graders thought it really was a candle!

And the finished product…

I’ve never seen anyone else do this, so I’m proud to call this an original idea. I don’t know how many more years he’s actually gonna let me make these and bring them to school. I’m enjoying while I can. I love having and creating new traditions in our family. Let me hear some of your birthday traditions!

This is another project inspired by Leigh. She made the cutest cookie pops for Christmas…and (with her permission) I took the idea for Valentine’s Day. I used Oreo cookies, candy melts, Wilton lollipop sticks, and various sprinkle-y goodies. I carefully opened each cookie (do what you may for the ones that break!) and hollowed out a space for the stick with a drinking straw. Then I put the cookie back together, with the stick inside, and dipped the cookie into melted candy melts. While they were wet, I used the sprinkle-y goodies to decorate them including the nonpareils heart I made (see below). After they were dry, I covered the cookie pops with little bags and tied them off with twist ties.

I printed off a sheet of hearts on my printer and put a layer of wax paper on top of the printer sheet. Using red candy melts, I piped the candy onto the wax paper to fill in each heart. While they were still wet, I sprinkled red non-pareils all over the hearts. I got the idea when Bridget over at Bake at 350 showed us how to do monograms. When the hearts were dry, I carefully peeled them off the wax paper and onto the wet cookie pop coating. It’s a super cute idea for Valentine’s Day, but I could totally see this for just about any holiday. I think I’ll try piping some green shamrocks…

I love Valentine’s Day crafts and goodies. I mean, I love Valentine’s Day, too. But the weeks before getting ready are just as much fun and the day itself. I’m seriously in love with any holiday that combines red and pink and candy. I made a bunch of stuff this year, I just haven’t gotten it blogged yet. So even though Valentine season is over, I still wanna share…

Rice Krispie Heart Pops

I saw these gems over at Skip to my Lou. She gives a great step-by-step. I had never made real Rice Krispie Treats before…GASP! Man, they taste sooooo much better than those in the little blue packages. yum. I just made a big pan of them and cut them with a heart cookie cutter. I dipped mine in candy melts and used the cutest little heart sprinkles I found at Hobby Lobby. I put them on a stick (everything is better on a stick!) and wrapped them in the Wilton shaped bags. I did have to cut the sides of the bags up a little to fit the hearts inside. But when I tied them off with some ribbon, you couldn’t tell! They were a great little treat for the kids’ friends and I even stuck a few in their teachers’ boxes at school for a nice after school treat.

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Pin It Remember these? I’m guessing you probably do. It’s been, by far, my most popular post. Thanks again to Jeni for suggesting it. I recently had a comment on that post from Jen, suggesting a Valentine themed s’mores printable. I thought it was a great idea. I tweaked the design a little…and just happened to [...]